API is just the interface (e.g. add(operand1, operand2) - i.e. no implementation to that - and implementation is basically 99%+ of the code).

Being able to use an API for compatibility purposes is no different than for example Open Office being able to implement the file format for Word. The need for competition outweighs the argument as an API protected IP. Google's implementation uses the API (common) and then the implementation code which is probably more than 99% of the code base. As long as Google did not copy the code itself the API itself should be fair use. Languages and APIs should not be able to be protected as API.

The court has already previously ruled that you cannot protect interfaces for hardware for the purposes of locking out the competition on things like printer cartridges etc. An API is not much different than the software equivalent.

However, even if you are diehard Google hater - it's not clear whether copyrighting Apis ist a good idea.

I don't think it is. However, I also don't think that someone who knowingly and willingly tries to find a way around a technology licensing agreement for tremendous profit should go unpunished.

Well if you think they shouldn't be copyrightable then you can't object to Google suing them.

I think it's also important to put the work that goes into Apis into perspective. Yes they take creativity. But they are not usually created out fo thin air. The Java API is influenced by countless Apis before it such as C and C++.

Oracle itself has benefited from standing on the shoulder of Giants. I am not aware that they pay IBM for the SQL syntax (admittedly a language rather than API but clearly groundbreaking and which changed the database industry). All the companies that use Hadoop based their work on the original Google 2005 MapReduce paper that outlines MR and GFS (both of which Hadoop implements).

Oracle stands out for being incredible litigious and greedy. We will see who will win the next round in this particular fight.

In regard to those cases you state, if there are clear cases of licensing infringement (or clear intentional loophole exploitation) there, then I think Oracle should be made to pay. The same way I think that Google should pay for what was done with Java. Regardless of the fact that Java is now open source to anyone, at the time, the intent of Sun was to allow open source usage of Java in educational/non-profit situations, but you had to take a license if it was bundled in a commercial product. Which was pretty standard for the time -- Qt used this model as well.

Business decisions are not dependent on morality as a general rule. So yes let's forget who owns the company.

There's been lots of questionable moves over the years, the highest profile example off the top of my head being Apple's use of Xerox IP and "hard work" design. While it didn't turn out to be found illegal the argument could be made it just wasn't right, that the intent to take it without recompense was there. Yeah some money changed hands but not for the usage that Apple put it to IIRC. After all the court filings from Xerox were over with it wasn't actually illegal tho, even if it might not have been "right" in the view of some folks. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.htmlAre there similarities here?

Opening the doors to your technology company (Xerox), giving someone a demo of the technology you're working on without an agreement in place, and having them go off and invest 5 or 6 years + a lot of money creating their own, fairly different version of it (including designing custom hardware) is pretty different than having someone willfully look for a loophole in your software licensing agreement (and exploit open source projects to do so with minimal investment of time, effort, or ideas).

So that you're completely OK with. No issue with Android being influenced by Apple design choices then? It's certainly a fairly different version of it, requires years of work and a lot of money, and includes developing custom hardware.

You clearly don’t know the history of xerox parc and Apple. SMH

<br><br>No sir, you don't. Apple paid $1m in Apple shares for the privilege of what it took from PARC Xerox and vastly improved on it to boot.

You sir are apparently the one not familiar with it, and I've no idea what @radarthekat is hinting at. Perhaps he'll expand on his lone sentence.

f you go back at look at the history that's not what Apple gave them stock options for, not that it ended up mattering, and no Apple did not give Xerox a $million in stock.They gave Xerox the right to BUY 100,000 shares at $10/share which Xerox did, spending $1M of Xerox money buying those shares. Apple may have received a double benefit too. Besides getting $1M from Xerox they also may have avoided a patent infringement suit from one of the Xerox divisions, Shugart, by making Xerox an investor. So yeah I kinda get the history. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.html

That’s lawsuit was a bit of nonsense. At the time Apple visited PARC, a number of companies were working on the same concepts. The thing that matters here is that while Apple came out with the Lisa, which failed, they then modified it to become the Macintosh, which succeeded.

at the same time, Xerox came out with their own version, which they called the Star. That failed, and as a result, Xerox withdrew from the independent computer business.

this has been a problem for Xeros going back many years. They come up with an idea, and fail to capitalize on it. Apple made major improvements to Xerox’s very primitive UI. When Apple was finished, you could barely see any of Xerox’s work in it. Xerox;s idea for window controls were so,complex they weren’t usable. Other companies working on the concept also had complexity problems. All were eventually abandoned in favor of the much simpler, and intuitive system Apple came up with. So I guess that everyone stole Apple’s ideas. Should they sue everyone else?

My recollection of that story is that Jef Raskin was already committed to creating a graphical UI, and wanted Steve to visit Xerox to validate what they were already working on.

Here's an interview that might be of interest;

Anyone interested should start with a search on Jef Raskin and Macintosh.

API is just the interface (e.g. add(operand1, operand2) - i.e. no implementation to that - and implementation is basically 99%+ of the code).

Being able to use an API for compatibility purposes is no different than for example Open Office being able to implement the file format for Word. The need for competition outweighs the argument as an API protected IP. Google's implementation uses the API (common) and then the implementation code which is probably more than 99% of the code base. As long as Google did not copy the code itself the API itself should be fair use. Languages and APIs should not be able to be protected as API.

The court has already previously ruled that you cannot protect interfaces for hardware for the purposes of locking out the competition on things like printer cartridges etc. An API is not much different than the software equivalent.

However, even if you are diehard Google hater - it's not clear whether copyrighting Apis ist a good idea.

I don't think it is. However, I also don't think that someone who knowingly and willingly tries to find a way around a technology licensing agreement for tremendous profit should go unpunished.

Well if you think they shouldn't be copyrightable then you can't object to Google suing them.

I think it's also important to put the work that goes into Apis into perspective. Yes they take creativity. But they are not usually created out fo thin air. The Java API is influenced by countless Apis before it such as C and C++.

Oracle itself has benefited from standing on the shoulder of Giants. I am not aware that they pay IBM for the SQL syntax (admittedly a language rather than API but clearly groundbreaking and which changed the database industry). All the companies that use Hadoop based their work on the original Google 2005 MapReduce paper that outlines MR and GFS (both of which Hadoop implements).

Oracle stands out for being incredible litigious and greedy. We will see who will win the next round in this particular fight.

In regard to those cases you state, if there are clear cases of licensing infringement (or clear intentional loophole exploitation) there, then I think Oracle should be made to pay. The same way I think that Google should pay for what was done with Java. Regardless of the fact that Java is now open source to anyone, at the time, the intent of Sun was to allow open source usage of Java in educational/non-profit situations, but you had to take a license if it was bundled in a commercial product. Which was pretty standard for the time -- Qt used this model as well.

Business decisions are not dependent on morality as a general rule. So yes let's forget who owns the company.

There's been lots of questionable moves over the years, the highest profile example off the top of my head being Apple's use of Xerox IP and "hard work" design. While it didn't turn out to be found illegal the argument could be made it just wasn't right, that the intent to take it without recompense was there. Yeah some money changed hands but not for the usage that Apple put it to IIRC. After all the court filings from Xerox were over with it wasn't actually illegal tho, even if it might not have been "right" in the view of some folks. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.htmlAre there similarities here?

Opening the doors to your technology company (Xerox), giving someone a demo of the technology you're working on without an agreement in place, and having them go off and invest 5 or 6 years + a lot of money creating their own, fairly different version of it (including designing custom hardware) is pretty different than having someone willfully look for a loophole in your software licensing agreement (and exploit open source projects to do so with minimal investment of time, effort, or ideas).

So that you're completely OK with. No issue with Android being influenced by Apple design choices then? It's certainly a fairly different version of it, requires years of work and a lot of money, and includes developing custom hardware.

You clearly don’t know the history of xerox parc and Apple. SMH

<br><br>No sir, you don't. Apple paid $1m in Apple shares for the privilege of what it took from PARC Xerox and vastly improved on it to boot.

You sir are apparently the one not familiar with it, and I've no idea what @radarthekat is hinting at. Perhaps he'll expand on his lone sentence.

f you go back at look at the history that's not what Apple gave them stock options for, not that it ended up mattering, and no Apple did not give Xerox a $million in stock.They gave Xerox the right to BUY 100,000 shares at $10/share which Xerox did, spending $1M of Xerox money buying those shares. Apple may have received a double benefit too. Besides getting $1M from Xerox they also may have avoided a patent infringement suit from one of the Xerox divisions, Shugart, by making Xerox an investor. So yeah I kinda get the history. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.html

That’s lawsuit was a bit of nonsense. At the time Apple visited PARC, a number of companies were working on the same concepts. The thing that matters here is that while Apple came out with the Lisa, which failed, they then modified it to become the Macintosh, which succeeded.

at the same time, Xerox came out with their own version, which they called the Star. That failed, and as a result, Xerox withdrew from the independent computer business.

this has been a problem for Xeros going back many years. They come up with an idea, and fail to capitalize on it. Apple made major improvements to Xerox’s very primitive UI. When Apple was finished, you could barely see any of Xerox’s work in it. Xerox;s idea for window controls were so,complex they weren’t usable. Other companies working on the concept also had complexity problems. All were eventually abandoned in favor of the much simpler, and intuitive system Apple came up with. So I guess that everyone stole Apple’s ideas. Should they sue everyone else?

My recollection of that story is that Jef Raskin was already committed to creating a graphical UI, and wanted Steve to visit Xerox to validate what they were already working on.

Here's an interview that might be of interest;

Anyone interested should start with a search on Jef Raskin and Macintosh.

Might be appropriate to search on Bill Atkinson as well.

Right on Tmay. I've read the same thing. What Steve was shown at Xerox was apparently far different and more integrated than what those Apple engineer's had in mind. Once Mr. Jobs saw what PARC had developed he reportedly took things in a different direction, inspired by the Xerox efforts to realize how much they could really do with it. And thus the McIntosh interface.

I wonder what people think of Florian Mueller right now? Lots of hate thrown his way over the years and it turns out he was right. Not right like someone flipping a coin and claiming they had some kind of insight, but right in giving very detailed reasons why. And now this court decision aligns pretty closely to what Florian predicted.

On the flip side we have Groklaw, shut down years ago in a cowardly manner, being proven wrong in Oracle vs Google.

On a side note, I see the naysayers out with their typical doom & gloom saying stupid things like:

- So I can now sue anyone who uses a=b(x)?- This is going to make everything more expensive for consumers as we’ll have countless lawsuits demanding licensing fees from developers.- Developers are screwed as any API they use will see big companies swoop in and bury them in lawsuits.- This will destroy open source.

And so on.

Just because it's going back to court does not mean Florian Mueller was right. Stop spreading hyperbole.

Another factually wrong article on here... DED will you ever write something factual other than embellished nonsense to fit a narrative?

LOL!

Well it's true. Just because Google faces court again doesn't mean they "ripped off" anything. This "article" is written as if it was a done deal, which it has been shown a few times already is not, but that doesn't fit the narrative here.

I wonder what people think of Florian Mueller right now? Lots of hate thrown his way over the years and it turns out he was right. Not right like someone flipping a coin and claiming they had some kind of insight, but right in giving very detailed reasons why. And now this court decision aligns pretty closely to what Florian predicted.

On the flip side we have Groklaw, shut down years ago in a cowardly manner, being proven wrong in Oracle vs Google.

On a side note, I see the naysayers out with their typical doom & gloom saying stupid things like:

- So I can now sue anyone who uses a=b(x)?- This is going to make everything more expensive for consumers as we’ll have countless lawsuits demanding licensing fees from developers.- Developers are screwed as any API they use will see big companies swoop in and bury them in lawsuits.- This will destroy open source.

And so on.

Just because it's going back to court does not mean Florian Mueller was right. Stop spreading hyperbole.

Damages should be ALL of Google's profits off of android. If they didn't rip off of Java, then none of this profit would exist. Therefore, it only makes sense that ALL of said profit be paid to Oracle. On top of that, they also need to pay for any fee Oracle incurred from lawyers, loss of time from Oracle employees, and any other costs associated with issue. An injunction should also be in place unless they pay to license the code.

Google knew they are taking advantage of what is essentially within the Java ecosphere. If they had come right out and come to an agreement with Sun and be clear what they intended to do, and pay any fees Sun may request, they’d have their bases covered today. I mean, Google is no stranger to coding and intellectual property theft issues. If what they adopt will save them a lot of time and money, they should seek to legalise their approach even if they think they are not in infringement of any law.

API is just the interface (e.g. add(operand1, operand2) - i.e. no implementation to that - and implementation is basically 99%+ of the code).

Being able to use an API for compatibility purposes is no different than for example Open Office being able to implement the file format for Word. The need for competition outweighs the argument as an API protected IP. Google's implementation uses the API (common) and then the implementation code which is probably more than 99% of the code base. As long as Google did not copy the code itself the API itself should be fair use. Languages and APIs should not be able to be protected as API.

The court has already previously ruled that you cannot protect interfaces for hardware for the purposes of locking out the competition on things like printer cartridges etc. An API is not much different than the software equivalent.

However, even if you are diehard Google hater - it's not clear whether copyrighting Apis ist a good idea.

I don't think it is. However, I also don't think that someone who knowingly and willingly tries to find a way around a technology licensing agreement for tremendous profit should go unpunished.

Well if you think they shouldn't be copyrightable then you can't object to Google suing them.

I think it's also important to put the work that goes into Apis into perspective. Yes they take creativity. But they are not usually created out fo thin air. The Java API is influenced by countless Apis before it such as C and C++.

Oracle itself has benefited from standing on the shoulder of Giants. I am not aware that they pay IBM for the SQL syntax (admittedly a language rather than API but clearly groundbreaking and which changed the database industry). All the companies that use Hadoop based their work on the original Google 2005 MapReduce paper that outlines MR and GFS (both of which Hadoop implements).

Oracle stands out for being incredible litigious and greedy. We will see who will win the next round in this particular fight.

In regard to those cases you state, if there are clear cases of licensing infringement (or clear intentional loophole exploitation) there, then I think Oracle should be made to pay. The same way I think that Google should pay for what was done with Java. Regardless of the fact that Java is now open source to anyone, at the time, the intent of Sun was to allow open source usage of Java in educational/non-profit situations, but you had to take a license if it was bundled in a commercial product. Which was pretty standard for the time -- Qt used this model as well.

Business decisions are not dependent on morality as a general rule. So yes let's forget who owns the company.

There's been lots of questionable moves over the years, the highest profile example off the top of my head being Apple's use of Xerox IP and "hard work" design. While it didn't turn out to be found illegal the argument could be made it just wasn't right, that the intent to take it without recompense was there. Yeah some money changed hands but not for the usage that Apple put it to IIRC. After all the court filings from Xerox were over with it wasn't actually illegal tho, even if it might not have been "right" in the view of some folks. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.htmlAre there similarities here?

Bringing up Apple & Xerox -- classic troll move. As you must know, Apple gave Xerox corporate a million in stock for the right to use whatever they gleaned from the famed Jobs office visit. Xerox's corporate leadership was just too dumb at the time to realize it was a bad idea. Any failed suit later was sour grapes.

Further, Apple's devs added much, much more to the rough GUI ideas they saw at Xerox. From the people in the room:

I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.

Yes, to GatorGuy’s credit he stated early in this thread, damages are, well, damages. The courts attempt to ascertain how, and by how much, the defendant damaged the plaintive.

Let’s make up an example. I keep a leased backhoe for a few extra weeks and upon retiring it late refuse to pay the extra time on the lease. In addition, I clogged the thing up with sand causing $50k of damage to it. You, the construction company who leased it to me, sue me and win the case. What do I owe you? Wait, before answering, just know that during those few extra weeks I had your backhoe I dug up an old wreck down at the beach and recovered $700 million in gold.

It doesn’t matter what you did with it. It’s what you owe in late fees, and whatever the contract stated about possible damage payments. But that $700 million would go to the question of whether you could pony up the amount of money the court may state that you owe. In other words, no crying out of poverty, and an inability to shell out the cash.

Exactly. But a lot of folks get off track when they start thinking about the treasure dug up, or in this case, the money Google made directly or indirectly, from Android.

API is just the interface (e.g. add(operand1, operand2) - i.e. no implementation to that - and implementation is basically 99%+ of the code).

Being able to use an API for compatibility purposes is no different than for example Open Office being able to implement the file format for Word. The need for competition outweighs the argument as an API protected IP. Google's implementation uses the API (common) and then the implementation code which is probably more than 99% of the code base. As long as Google did not copy the code itself the API itself should be fair use. Languages and APIs should not be able to be protected as API.

The court has already previously ruled that you cannot protect interfaces for hardware for the purposes of locking out the competition on things like printer cartridges etc. An API is not much different than the software equivalent.

However, even if you are diehard Google hater - it's not clear whether copyrighting Apis ist a good idea.

I don't think it is. However, I also don't think that someone who knowingly and willingly tries to find a way around a technology licensing agreement for tremendous profit should go unpunished.

Well if you think they shouldn't be copyrightable then you can't object to Google suing them.

I think it's also important to put the work that goes into Apis into perspective. Yes they take creativity. But they are not usually created out fo thin air. The Java API is influenced by countless Apis before it such as C and C++.

Oracle itself has benefited from standing on the shoulder of Giants. I am not aware that they pay IBM for the SQL syntax (admittedly a language rather than API but clearly groundbreaking and which changed the database industry). All the companies that use Hadoop based their work on the original Google 2005 MapReduce paper that outlines MR and GFS (both of which Hadoop implements).

Oracle stands out for being incredible litigious and greedy. We will see who will win the next round in this particular fight.

In regard to those cases you state, if there are clear cases of licensing infringement (or clear intentional loophole exploitation) there, then I think Oracle should be made to pay. The same way I think that Google should pay for what was done with Java. Regardless of the fact that Java is now open source to anyone, at the time, the intent of Sun was to allow open source usage of Java in educational/non-profit situations, but you had to take a license if it was bundled in a commercial product. Which was pretty standard for the time -- Qt used this model as well.

Business decisions are not dependent on morality as a general rule. So yes let's forget who owns the company.

There's been lots of questionable moves over the years, the highest profile example off the top of my head being Apple's use of Xerox IP and "hard work" design. While it didn't turn out to be found illegal the argument could be made it just wasn't right, that the intent to take it without recompense was there. Yeah some money changed hands but not for the usage that Apple put it to IIRC. After all the court filings from Xerox were over with it wasn't actually illegal tho, even if it might not have been "right" in the view of some folks. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.htmlAre there similarities here?

Opening the doors to your technology company (Xerox), giving someone a demo of the technology you're working on without an agreement in place, and having them go off and invest 5 or 6 years + a lot of money creating their own, fairly different version of it (including designing custom hardware) is pretty different than having someone willfully look for a loophole in your software licensing agreement (and exploit open source projects to do so with minimal investment of time, effort, or ideas).

So that you're completely OK with. No issue with Android being influenced by Apple design choices then? It's certainly a fairly different version of it, requires years of work and a lot of money, and includes developing custom hardware.

You clearly don’t know the history of xerox parc and Apple. SMH

<br><br>No sir, you don't. Apple paid $1m in Apple shares for the privilege of what it took from PARC Xerox and vastly improved on it to boot.

API is just the interface (e.g. add(operand1, operand2) - i.e. no implementation to that - and implementation is basically 99%+ of the code).

Being able to use an API for compatibility purposes is no different than for example Open Office being able to implement the file format for Word. The need for competition outweighs the argument as an API protected IP. Google's implementation uses the API (common) and then the implementation code which is probably more than 99% of the code base. As long as Google did not copy the code itself the API itself should be fair use. Languages and APIs should not be able to be protected as API.

The court has already previously ruled that you cannot protect interfaces for hardware for the purposes of locking out the competition on things like printer cartridges etc. An API is not much different than the software equivalent.

However, even if you are diehard Google hater - it's not clear whether copyrighting Apis ist a good idea.

I don't think it is. However, I also don't think that someone who knowingly and willingly tries to find a way around a technology licensing agreement for tremendous profit should go unpunished.

Well if you think they shouldn't be copyrightable then you can't object to Google suing them.

I think it's also important to put the work that goes into Apis into perspective. Yes they take creativity. But they are not usually created out fo thin air. The Java API is influenced by countless Apis before it such as C and C++.

Oracle itself has benefited from standing on the shoulder of Giants. I am not aware that they pay IBM for the SQL syntax (admittedly a language rather than API but clearly groundbreaking and which changed the database industry). All the companies that use Hadoop based their work on the original Google 2005 MapReduce paper that outlines MR and GFS (both of which Hadoop implements).

Oracle stands out for being incredible litigious and greedy. We will see who will win the next round in this particular fight.

In regard to those cases you state, if there are clear cases of licensing infringement (or clear intentional loophole exploitation) there, then I think Oracle should be made to pay. The same way I think that Google should pay for what was done with Java. Regardless of the fact that Java is now open source to anyone, at the time, the intent of Sun was to allow open source usage of Java in educational/non-profit situations, but you had to take a license if it was bundled in a commercial product. Which was pretty standard for the time -- Qt used this model as well.

Business decisions are not dependent on morality as a general rule. So yes let's forget who owns the company.

There's been lots of questionable moves over the years, the highest profile example off the top of my head being Apple's use of Xerox IP and "hard work" design. While it didn't turn out to be found illegal the argument could be made it just wasn't right, that the intent to take it without recompense was there. Yeah some money changed hands but not for the usage that Apple put it to IIRC. After all the court filings from Xerox were over with it wasn't actually illegal tho, even if it might not have been "right" in the view of some folks. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.htmlAre there similarities here?

Opening the doors to your technology company (Xerox), giving someone a demo of the technology you're working on without an agreement in place, and having them go off and invest 5 or 6 years + a lot of money creating their own, fairly different version of it (including designing custom hardware) is pretty different than having someone willfully look for a loophole in your software licensing agreement (and exploit open source projects to do so with minimal investment of time, effort, or ideas).

So that you're completely OK with. No issue with Android being influenced by Apple design choices then? It's certainly a fairly different version of it, requires years of work and a lot of money, and includes developing custom hardware.

You clearly don’t know the history of xerox parc and Apple. SMH

<br><br>No sir, you don't. Apple paid $1m in Apple shares for the privilege of what it took from PARC Xerox and vastly improved on it to boot.

You sir are apparently the one not familiar with it, and I've no idea what @radarthekat is hinting at. Perhaps he'll expand on his lone sentence.

f you go back at look at the history that's not what Apple gave them stock options for, not that it ended up mattering, and no Apple did not give Xerox a $million in stock.They gave Xerox the right to BUY 100,000 shares at $10/share which Xerox did, spending $1M of Xerox money buying those shares. Apple may have received a double benefit too. Besides getting $1M from Xerox they also may have avoided a patent infringement suit from one of the Xerox divisions, Shugart, by making Xerox an investor. So yeah I kinda get the history. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.html

And so how on earth do you equate that with what Google did with respect to Java? Seems Apple and Xerox reached a proper accord, as businesses should attempt to do. And Xerox made the decision to divest their shares at some point thereafter. Think if they had simply held them. Seems it would easily have been Xerox who got the better end of the deal in that case.

The argument Google was making in this latest appeal was pretty thin, since they were relying in part on arguing "interoperability" being a rationale. In actual practice there was limited interoperability. I expected they'd lose this particular court case, but do not expect monetary damages from a follow-up retrial anywhere near the $9B that Ellison would like. He couldn't have expected that level of profit when he bought Sun years after Google introduced Android anyway which is why Sun sold so cheap. So in reality Ellison suffered no loss at all from Google not paying a licensing fee to the previous owner.

I have been in the industry for close to 35 years... and although things have changed -- early on it was always understood generally that languages themselves could not be protected IP -- only the implementation of the compiler.

As far as I am concerned this is a very slippery slope since protecting languages, protecting APIs only leads to death of competition. I have worked on projects that probably contains huge numbers of lines of code (some of it good, much of it bad and duplicated) and protecting a language and protecting an API would only lead to both the compiler being made a violation of IP, but also language translators, and things like Wine, of course, would be illegal since it implements APIs to run Windows Applications on Linux...

I don't have much love for Google - but I am worried about the long-term consequences.

The death of competition is already a state we've mostly passed by. Unless you mean the death of competition between the few monstrous corporations playing with 99% of the wealth and all of the market. Sure, they're still struggling to get each other's piece of the pie.

Competition is alive and well -- regardless of the size of the individual corporations. I have no problem with the size of a corporation as long as it does not restrict competition -- which is unfortunately what has been happening with regulation. It is not a problem directly related to the size of a corporation -- it is problem created by the corruption of the democratic and regulatory system (one vote per citizen was supposed to prevent this) - but the blame has to be laid squarely at the citizens of the country for letting it happen. People don't get rid of the bad actors, only tend to try to get rid of the "others point of view" actors -- their guy is great (whether he is morally and literally corrupt).

The issue with "intellectual property" is a modern creation of government (first royalty, then it's replacement) and while it does some good, it is unfortunately massively abused. A patent or copyright is a government-issued monopoly (early on it was part of the monopolies act in Great Britain - codified to prevent royal abuse)... not much different than a salt monopoly, or a tea monopoly or many other monopolies. It was implemented to encourage research (not necessarily development of a product) but inventions. 20 years protection for these "new" inventions. It is not about ownership of property, it is just a monopoly issued by the government. Copyrights (the other "intellectual property" monopoly is about protecting artists works basically for the duration of their life basically) -- it is not there to protect ideas -- it is about protecting the whole creation. It was never meant to protect an author from someone basically taking a similar storyline and writing their own version - as long as the implementation itself is not copied. At the core of it, a monopoly is the antithesis of a market economy, but it was seen as a reasonable compromise. Unfortunately, the compromise has become more about legalized extortion than about encouraging investment in research.

Extending "intellectual property" monopolies to languages do more harm than good -- since it is foundational. The investment of people writing code on top of that foundation and being locked into a specific ecosystem with no ability to move from it without a complete reinvestment in rewriting the entire system (translators would not be legal since they would be infringing). In the end ideas and development should not be protected, only the research and the implementation. If the API is part of the foundation of the language (standard library) it really is inseparable from the language itself and it should not be protected -- it cannot and does not stand alone. Most languages are for the most part substantially copied from one another, names of functions are often reused, the overall structure really falls into substantially very few major differences.

Effectively what Google did was effectively allow for people to develop their applications with 3rd party products which were originally developed around the java ecosystem and test and complete the system. The deployment of the application though is effectively translated to a different platform for use. Facebook developed a lot of their framework in PHP, but the deployment often translated into C++ for compilation and deployment. There effectively is not much difference between the two. The only real legitimate question as far as I am concerned is whether the Davik "vm" substantially infringes on Oracles jvm.

The argument Google was making in this latest appeal was pretty thin, since they were relying in part on arguing "interoperability" being a rationale. In actual practice there was limited interoperability. I expected they'd lose this particular court case, but do not expect monetary damages from a follow-up retrial anywhere near the $9B that Ellison would like. He couldn't have expected that level of profit when he bought Sun years after Google introduced Android anyway which is why Sun sold so cheap.

So in reality Ellison suffered no loss due to Google not licensing Java from the previous owner. It's really not all that different from a patent troll buying up a couple of unused patents for a hundred bucks and then using a claim from one of them to sue Apple for stealing from them for use in Siri or something and demanding $Millions for the harm.

As for "stolen Java" the way that Google used it was more like copying chapter names and then writing the original book that filled the rest of the 1000 pages as I've understood it. If accurate it hardly seems like a stolen product, more like a handful of bolts scooped up.

Even the Oracle Java software as a whole has become more problematic security-wise and far less trustworthy, to the point that a great number of folks won't get anywhere near it given the choice, and professional advice is to rid your computer's of it.

So I don't weep for an Ellison-led Oracle who wants to claim they've lost profit on Java because of Google. They're not seeing the profits they could due to their own uncaring attitude towards it, and destroying it's reputation further with their sneak malware installs seemingly driven by a personal vendetta pursued by Larry Ellison and his Ask search bar and Yahoo browser replacement hoping to cause harm to Google but hurting computer users to do so. He evidently does not care about any collateral damage as long as he gets what he wants.

He paid little for Sun because it wasn't worth much. He was hoping he could discover hidden gold there and with his $B's it was a only a blip on the financials. Ellison didn't want Sun's Java because he thought he could make it better IMO. He was buying a lotto ticket that could be tossed away without much loss if it didn't pan out.

The most interesting, and telling, part of your comment was this bit:

”It's still despicable conduct.”

i moted that you reserve that sentiment for Oracle but don’t apply it to Google, which willfully stole technology from Oracle and the whole damn interface and user interactionmodel from Apple. What would Google need to do to earn a despicable badge? Mine people for data to sell to advertisers? Would that do it?

You've not ever seen me call Google out for lying? You don't follow my posts as close as you think you do then. I have.

..and if Google mined people for your personal data to sell to ANYONE I'd call that out as despicable too. They don't so you're arguing a moot point.

Your putting words in my mouth. Read it again. I didn’t say google sold anyone’s personal data. I inferred google mines people for data to sell to advertisers. Data, not personal data. So my point is not moot and you can’t avoid the obvious answer. You are duplicitous in your communications here.

Google doesn't sell ANY user data, personal or not AFAIK. Google isn't in the business of selling data like an Experian or TransUnion, they do contract ad placement for both large and small companies (along with other advertising-related services and a few subscription-based services thrown in with misc hardware stuff). Whatever data they have is kept locked up tight to be used only for assisting with more accurate and therefore more valuable ad placement services or for the benefit of the user themselves for user-facing features. It's not sold. The companies like Apple and P&G and Grannies Korner Kafe are happily covering your entry fee for "free" Google services thru their ad payments to them.

Really? You couldn’t just go back and read what I wrote? I neither said user data nor personal data. I said data! Are you deliberately being obtuse?

Well if it's not personal data or user data then could you tell me WHAT data you claim Google is selling that should be considered "despicable"? I asked earlier after you implied I was being intentionally obtuse in avoiding an answer. Even sent you a direct mention so you wouldn't miss it. It's kinda looking more like it's you deliberately avoiding an answer (notice I didn't need to say obtuse), which seems out of character for you, as was the flyby insult.

The argument Google was making in this latest appeal was pretty thin, since they were relying in part on arguing "interoperability" being a rationale. In actual practice there was limited interoperability. I expected they'd lose this particular court case, but do not expect monetary damages from a follow-up retrial anywhere near the $9B that Ellison would like. He couldn't have expected that level of profit when he bought Sun years after Google introduced Android anyway which is why Sun sold so cheap.

So in reality Ellison suffered no loss due to Google not licensing Java from the previous owner. It's really not all that different from a patent troll buying up a couple of unused patents for a hundred bucks and then using a claim from one of them to sue Apple for stealing from them for use in Siri or something and demanding $Millions for the harm.

As for "stolen Java" the way that Google used it was more like copying chapter names and then writing the original book that filled the rest of the 1000 pages as I've understood it. If accurate it hardly seems like a stolen product, more like a handful of bolts scooped up.

Even the Oracle Java software as a whole has become more problematic security-wise and far less trustworthy, to the point that a great number of folks won't get anywhere near it given the choice, and professional advice is to rid your computer's of it.

So I don't weep for an Ellison-led Oracle who wants to claim they've lost profit on Java because of Google. They're not seeing the profits they could due to their own uncaring attitude towards it, and destroying it's reputation further with their sneak malware installs seemingly driven by a personal vendetta pursued by Larry Ellison and his Ask search bar and Yahoo browser replacement hoping to cause harm to Google but hurting computer users to do so. He evidently does not care about any collateral damage as long as he gets what he wants.

He paid little for Sun because it wasn't worth much. He was hoping he could discover hidden gold there and with his $B's it was a only a blip on the financials. Ellison didn't want Sun's Java because he thought he could make it better IMO. He was buying a lotto ticket that could be tossed away without much loss if it didn't pan out.

The most interesting, and telling, part of your comment was this bit:

”It's still despicable conduct.”

i moted that you reserve that sentiment for Oracle but don’t apply it to Google, which willfully stole technology from Oracle and the whole damn interface and user interactionmodel from Apple. What would Google need to do to earn a despicable badge? Mine people for data to sell to advertisers? Would that do it?

You've not ever seen me call Google out for lying? You don't follow my posts as close as you think you do then. I have.

..and if Google mined people for your personal data to sell to ANYONE I'd call that out as despicable too. They don't so you're arguing a moot point.

Your putting words in my mouth. Read it again. I didn’t say google sold anyone’s personal data. I inferred google mines people for data to sell to advertisers. Data, not personal data. So my point is not moot and you can’t avoid the obvious answer. You are duplicitous in your communications here.

Google doesn't sell ANY user data, personal or not AFAIK. Google isn't in the business of selling data like an Experian or TransUnion, they do contract ad placement for both large and small companies (along with other advertising-related services and a few subscription-based services thrown in with misc hardware stuff). Whatever data they have is kept locked up tight to be used only for assisting with more accurate and therefore more valuable ad placement services or for the benefit of the user themselves for user-facing features. It's not sold. The companies like Apple and P&G and Grannies Korner Kafe are happily covering your entry fee for "free" Google services thru their ad payments to them.

Really? You couldn’t just go back and read what I wrote? I neither said user data nor personal data. I said data! Are you deliberately being obtuse?

Well if it's not personal data or user data then could you tell me WHAT data you claim Google is selling that should be considered "despicable"? I asked earlier after you implied I was being intentionally obtuse in avoiding an answer. Even sent you a direct mention so you wouldn't miss it. It's kinda looking more like it's you deliberately avoiding an answer (notice I didn't need to say obtuse), which seems out of character for you, as was the flyby insult.

Google does not sell personal data - that would be really stupid since that is the foundation of their business and selling copies of it would be self-destructive. What they sell is access to you (not you the individual but you plural -- aggregated). Buying advertising in a newspaper (old fashioned) was not that much different, they would tell the advertisers aggregated summary of who reads it, how many, what gender, their age range etc. From that, a person wanting to advertise would decide if it is worth it to them at the price available. In both cases - you were the product they were selling to advertisers. The difference now is granularity and targetting, they aggregate information about into non-personal aggregated "lists" to which you can select (i.e. age range, education, etc.) and buy advertising targetted to a subset of that group. At no point does google sell your personal data, they sell access to their "customer" (aka product groups) by people that want to advertise using aggregated data (again not personal data). Personal data - i.e. name, address, postal code, sex, age, etc. (or even a mailing list) -- is not something that Google is in the business of. It might seem small to some people, but it is actually quite a massive difference.

API is just the interface (e.g. add(operand1, operand2) - i.e. no implementation to that - and implementation is basically 99%+ of the code).

Being able to use an API for compatibility purposes is no different than for example Open Office being able to implement the file format for Word. The need for competition outweighs the argument as an API protected IP. Google's implementation uses the API (common) and then the implementation code which is probably more than 99% of the code base. As long as Google did not copy the code itself the API itself should be fair use. Languages and APIs should not be able to be protected as API.

The court has already previously ruled that you cannot protect interfaces for hardware for the purposes of locking out the competition on things like printer cartridges etc. An API is not much different than the software equivalent.

However, even if you are diehard Google hater - it's not clear whether copyrighting Apis ist a good idea.

I don't think it is. However, I also don't think that someone who knowingly and willingly tries to find a way around a technology licensing agreement for tremendous profit should go unpunished.

Well if you think they shouldn't be copyrightable then you can't object to Google suing them.

I think it's also important to put the work that goes into Apis into perspective. Yes they take creativity. But they are not usually created out fo thin air. The Java API is influenced by countless Apis before it such as C and C++.

Oracle itself has benefited from standing on the shoulder of Giants. I am not aware that they pay IBM for the SQL syntax (admittedly a language rather than API but clearly groundbreaking and which changed the database industry). All the companies that use Hadoop based their work on the original Google 2005 MapReduce paper that outlines MR and GFS (both of which Hadoop implements).

Oracle stands out for being incredible litigious and greedy. We will see who will win the next round in this particular fight.

In regard to those cases you state, if there are clear cases of licensing infringement (or clear intentional loophole exploitation) there, then I think Oracle should be made to pay. The same way I think that Google should pay for what was done with Java. Regardless of the fact that Java is now open source to anyone, at the time, the intent of Sun was to allow open source usage of Java in educational/non-profit situations, but you had to take a license if it was bundled in a commercial product. Which was pretty standard for the time -- Qt used this model as well.

Business decisions are not dependent on morality as a general rule. So yes let's forget who owns the company.

There's been lots of questionable moves over the years, the highest profile example off the top of my head being Apple's use of Xerox IP and "hard work" design. While it didn't turn out to be found illegal the argument could be made it just wasn't right, that the intent to take it without recompense was there. Yeah some money changed hands but not for the usage that Apple put it to IIRC. After all the court filings from Xerox were over with it wasn't actually illegal tho, even if it might not have been "right" in the view of some folks. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.htmlAre there similarities here?

Opening the doors to your technology company (Xerox), giving someone a demo of the technology you're working on without an agreement in place, and having them go off and invest 5 or 6 years + a lot of money creating their own, fairly different version of it (including designing custom hardware) is pretty different than having someone willfully look for a loophole in your software licensing agreement (and exploit open source projects to do so with minimal investment of time, effort, or ideas).

So that you're completely OK with. No issue with Android being influenced by Apple design choices then? It's certainly a fairly different version of it, requires years of work and a lot of money, and includes developing custom hardware.

You clearly don’t know the history of xerox parc and Apple. SMH

<br><br>No sir, you don't. Apple paid $1m in Apple shares for the privilege of what it took from PARC Xerox and vastly improved on it to boot.

You sir are apparently the one not familiar with it, and I've no idea what @radarthekat is hinting at. Perhaps he'll expand on his lone sentence.

f you go back at look at the history that's not what Apple gave them stock options for, not that it ended up mattering, and no Apple did not give Xerox a $million in stock.They gave Xerox the right to BUY 100,000 shares at $10/share which Xerox did, spending $1M of Xerox money buying those shares. Apple may have received a double benefit too. Besides getting $1M from Xerox they also may have avoided a patent infringement suit from one of the Xerox divisions, Shugart, by making Xerox an investor. So yeah I kinda get the history. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.html

And so how on earth do you equate that with what Google did with respect to Java? Seems Apple and Xerox reached a proper accord, as businesses should attempt to do. And Xerox made the decision to divest their shares at some point thereafter. Think if they had simply held them. Seems it would easily have been Xerox who got the better end of the deal in that case.

I would have thought after reading the thread to that point you would have understood the reason for mentioning it had to do with a "morality" point raised by Auxio.

Any possible direct similarities exist in the the claims of the aggrieved parties and the responses of the defendants in arguing for dismissal, in Google's case referring to the originally filed lawsuit and not this appeal. The details of Apple/Xerox and Google/Sun arrangements are of course quite a bit different as you point out with Google being more obviously "in the wrong" IMO. But at the same time both Google and Apple took what they got for free, and neither of the parties who own what they took were happy about it. Xerox sued, Sun Micro didn't. Then Oracle buys Sun Micro a few years later and here we are.

Google is unlikely to get away with it, and rightly so. It was a dumb decision. And NO I am not conflating Apple with Google.

This ruling is a lot bigger then this situation. If APIs can now be copyrighted the entire industry will change dramatically. We have copied APIs for decades and it is vital for the tech world we have today.
Heck, Oracle themselves abuse this ruling and re-use APIs.

Please provide some backup for this statement - I have read quite a few articles and the code that was "copied" was always the API (outline) i.e. java.util.BigDecimal.<method> - no implementation code.

You will NOT see it. Google did not copy the code obviously. If this ruling stays as is our existing tech world will break. We have copied APIs for decades. The industry depends on it and Oracle themselves do this all the time. As long as code not copied it should be fine. Google did NOT do any unusual.